High-volume, high-pressure pumps are utilized at wellsites for a variety of pumping operations. Such operations may include drilling, cementing, acidizing, water jet cutting, hydraulic fracturing, and other wellsites operations. In some pumping operations, several pumps may be fluidly connected to a well via various fluid conduits and/or a manifold. During such operations, the fluid conduits and/or the manifold distributes low-pressure fluid from a mixer, a blender, and/or other sources among the pumps and combines pressurized fluid from the pumps for injection into the well.
Success of the pumping operations at a wellsites may be affected by marry factors, including efficiency, failure rates, and safety related to operation of the pumps. Systematic high fluid pressures, flow rates, and vibrations generated by the pumps may cause mechanical fatigue, wear, and other damage to the pumps, which may decrease pumping flow rates and efficiency.
To ensure that the pumps produce the intended flow rates or otherwise operate as intended, human operators at the wellsite may manually control or adjust operation of each pump and the associated transmission during downhole pumping operations and/or perform pressure and flow rate calibrations, diagnostics, and other tests before commencing such downhole pumping operations. To perform tests and to oversee the actual downhole pumping operations, the operators typically approach the pumps to visually inspect the fluid sensors and to manually adjust the pumps, thus exposing themselves to a potentially dangerous environment. Approaching the pumps during testing or pumping operations may be dangerous, such as because high-pressure fluid within the pumps may escape, which may lead to serious injuries. Also, performing the testing and pumping operations manually may result in inconsistent pump settings and, thus, inconsistent pump performance.
Furthermore, automated control of pumps using gear and throttle control is difficult, as the pumps may be constructed using different components and may have experienced different levels of wear and tear. For example, different fracturing pump components (e.g., the engine, the transmission, the power end, the fluid end, etc.) may have different parameters and capabilities. Therefore, a same “operation set-point” (i.e., gear and throttle set-point pair) may result in a different output flow rates for different pumps in addition, different wear levels of different pump components increase the variability in operating the pumps to achieve a target flow rate.
Automated monitoring of pump parameters is another challenge associated with pump operation. External factors such as, but not limited to, pressure response from the well may invalidate previously made decisions and necessitate the operator to alter the engine speed (e.g., throttle) and transmission (i.e., gear) set-points to prevent damage to the pump unit, to achieve the intended rate in a different way, or to adjust the intended flow rate because it is no longer achievable.